Previews

The Dishonored Demo That Didn't Happen

The difference between what happens in this freeform game, and what could have happened.

Arkane Studios' Harvey Smith (of Deus Ex and Thief fame) is demoing Dishonored, which fits in the narrow category of first-person, choice-and-consequence, combat/stealth games with dynamic A.I., set in a retro-future industrial sort of steampunk/alternate-history setting. You know the type, right? Think Thief meets BioShock meets Deus Ex meets Alpha Protocol. Here's what could have happened during my Dishonored demo, but didn't.

The mission objective: Assassinate a lawyer. But we went further than that. We obtained the evidence needed to discredit him. By sneaking into a closely guarded house, we found proof that he's been evicting people from their homes on false pretenses. So not only is he dead, he's... wait for it... dishonored!

What actually happened: We saw all those guards around the house and just moved on. The laywer's dead, sure. But whatever secondary effect discrediting him would have had is lost to us. The end result: Because we just flat-out killed him, the chaos rating of the world is higher than it would have otherwise been. Basically, this is Dishonored's version of an alignment mechanic. But instead of placing a value judgment on what you do, it tracks whether you favor brute force or surgical precision, whether you kill innocents, and whether you're inclined to break things and make a big mess. The storyline and world adjust accordingly. For instance, the higher the chaos rating, the more plague-infected hungry rats spawn to attack anyone who strays into the shadows.

We encounter a thug threatening to rape a woman in an alley. We intervene. His buddies drop into the scene, and we're in a three-on-one fight. Fortunately, we have spell powers and a couple of different guns, so we win. The woman escapes shaken but alive -- and with her virtue intact.

What actually happened: Most of that actually happened. Except the last part. The woman was devoured by rats when she ran away. As Smith warned us, Dishonored is set in a hostile universe.

The streets are full of electrical defensive walls and watchtowers and guard patrols and weird spindly-legged mech things called Tall Boys. We use our fantastical abilities -- which include a windstorm, the power to bend time, a long-range crossbow, a powerful flintlock, and a handy blade (leading to plenty of gruesome adrenaline) -- thereby powering through the opposition and reaching our target.

What actually happened: We used a combination of short-range teleportation and super-jumps to work our way across the rooftops to our target location.

We have to get into the lawyer's mansion to assassinate him. We possess a rat; we actually enter his little rat brain and see through his little rat eyes. Then we drive him, much like you'd drive the remote-control car in Call of Duty. We go into a rat hole and down what looks suspiciously like a duct from Deus Ex. We emerge out the other side, and then possess someone else to go about the mission.

What actually happened: An unarmed servant stomps on the rat and kills it. The servant would have been no match for us if we'd just burst through the door, flintlock blazing. But servants are the natural enemies of rats, and a lone rat doesn't stand much of a chance.

We find a thug with a broken leg. He can't get away. He's part of a smuggling ring that's cornered the market on the curative elixir to treat a plague afflicting the city, so he's well-equipped. We pounce on him and take his awesome loot.

What actually happened: We never found this guy. "We're fans of extra space," says Smith. "That's space [that's] not part of the main path. Sub-threads and side plots and stuff like that."

Spy Guy says: Hmmmm, I think I like Tom's version way better. What do you say, readers? How does Dishonored sound to you?